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The amount of new practices, products and recurring revenue services brought to market are the vital signs of a solution provider business. The solution providers that view cloud services as an opportunity to move fast and make big bets will be the ones left standing in the new era of IT.

The belief that the federal government should leverage the innovation potential of small businesses by protecting them from large business competition dates back decades. That said, growing your business within the realities of the federal market is its own challenge.

No matter how you cut it, customer adoption of the cloud is happening at a faster pace than anyone anticipated, and it has all comers scrambling to play catch-up in what is sure to be an era of heightened channel conflict.

America's mixed sentiments about economic globalization are reflected in a set of rules that control the federal government's procurement of foreign products or services. Of these, the Trade Agreements Act (TAA), allows the government to exempt itself from the overarching Buy American Act (BAA) when it comes to IT.

More than two-thirds of all IT revenue flows through indirect channels, industry analysts estimate, and transactions between IT providers and their channel partners and end customers generate mind-boggling amounts of data. Unfortunately, too few providers are tapping their channel data's full potential.

We have partners that have huge clients. These enterprise companies are sometimes so big that carriers protect them, not allowing agents to work with them, regardless of previous history, the value the agent brings, or even when the company requests the agent's presence and participation.

TBI held a training workshop recently at the XChange Solution Provider conference in Los Angles. It ran for more than five hours. By the end of the marathon session, everyone in the room had participated. And then when we were finished, not a single person left without coming up and thanking us. "This was not what I was expecting," we heard repeatedly. "This was the best training I have ever had," said many.